Thursday 7 July 2011 17.32 EDT
First published on Thursday 7 July 2011 17.32 EDT

That Rupert Murdoch is ruthless is a universally acknowledged truth. But his action in killing off the 168-year-old News of the World – the first paper he bought in Britain 42 years ago – was one of the most clinical moves in his long, tumultuous career as a newspaper publisher. Some would go further and say that it was one of his most cynical.

The statement released by his son, James, in the afternoon is remarkable, both for what it contains and for its omissions. Much of it says very eloquently precisely what we have been saying since the day – almost exactly two years ago – we revealed that he had signed a secret £1m deal to buy the silence of one of the multiple victims of his journalists' sordid and illegal acts. He now concedes that payment was wrong. He acknowledges that the paper has been sullied by repeated "inhuman" editorial behaviour which was "without conscience or legitimate purpose"; that the company failed to investigate itself properly; that executives had misled the police, misled parliament and misled the public.

That is a devastating admission of criminality, incompetence, misjudgment and deception. In any other company this would be a statement of resignation. But – apart from Mr Murdoch's limited admission of error in respect of the 2009 payout – there is no clue as to who is to blame for a catalogue of calamity so grave that a newspaper itself must be sacrificed in atonement. Who on earth was responsible for these catastrophic editorial and management failures? The answer is "wrongdoers" – unnamed people who apparently "turned a good newsroom bad".

None of this currently makes much sense except as a desperate exercise in saving executive skins, including his own. It is certainly true that the newspaper's reputation has been appallingly tarnished by the drip-feed of revelations which began in this paper and which have this week swelled to a torrent. It may be that the board of News Corp, which belatedly inserted independent investigators into the company, is aware of further revelations which – coupled with an already burgeoning commercial boycott – could have proved terminal to the paper's already damaged credibility and finances. Some suspect there is a simpler commercial explanation involving already well-advanced plans to merge the Sunday and weekday editorial staffs into a seven-day operation.

But numerous questions are still left hanging. There are two important ones: who are these "wrongdoers" whose actions caused the death of one of the most famous newspapers in the world? And how on earth can the executives responsible for this mess possibly convince themselves, let alone a sceptical outside world, that they are the right team to clean it up now? If Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International, was not herself one of the "wrongdoers" then she was guilty of such editorial blindness and managerial ineptitude that she should resign. Mr Murdoch's statement praises the "loyal staff … whose good work is a credit to journalism". But the blunt conclusion is: they go, she stays.

When we published the 2009 story about Mr Murdoch's payoff to the Professional Footballers' Association's Gordon Taylor, NI responded by telling MPs that we had deliberately misled the public. If, instead of giving in to its worst instincts – blustering denial and attack – the company had taken the allegations seriously, it is unlikely that it would now be taking the desperate step of closing a title. Now it will be for the police, the courts and a judicial inquiry to get to the bottom of the systematic "wrongdoing" within NI – and how its baleful influence corrupted and infected wider public life, including the police. And if Ms Brooks and Mr Murdoch Jr insist on staying in post, parliament should now require them to give evidence before MPs. This time, please, the truth.